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The Blue Waters of the Caribbean Sea South of the United States, the blue waters
of the Caribbean Sea once were known as the Spanish Main.
This was because fanirids sailed along these shores.
Today, fast white steamships travel across the Caribbean with cargoes more
valuable than pirates' gold.
Officers and trim white ships and white uniforms pick up their golden cargoes
from a place we call Banana Land.
This land, as you see on the map, extends from Mexico on the north, includes
Guatemala and Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama, Colombia on the northern coast of
South America, and the islands of Cuba, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic.
Some of the capital cities of Banana Land are as large as Jacksonville,
Florida, or Fort Worth, Texas.
This is Guatemala City, as seen from the air.
The streets and public squares are well laid out and beautifully planned.
Some of the cities of Banana Land are cities of strange contrast because they
have been destroyed by earthquakes and since rebuilt.
Side by side, you will find the old and the new.
Many of the buildings are of stucco.
The streets, however, are still quaint and typically Spanish-American.
It is not unusual to see women with baskets on their heads
outdoing the family marketing.
Many North American firms do business here.
In modern stores, you can buy things imported from the United States.
People who live in the city dress very much like the people
in our own southern states.
There are many churches and people go to church regularly.
They speak Spanish, of course, as most of them are of Spanish descent.
If you wanted to greet them, you would say buenos días,
which means in Spanish, good day.
The people are very polite.
Sweet frozen ice is as popular as our own ice cream.
Every public square has its public water fountain, a watering trough.
These women are filling their homemade jars with water just as their ancestors
have done for hundreds of years.
In all middle American cities, the market is a very busy place.
Here you see all kinds of strange sites.
Most of the farmers who live around the city are Indians.
Each morning they come into the city bringing hand-woven blankets, handmade pots
and leather goods, fruits and vegetables from their small farms.
Do you like ripe melons?
Ripe red tomatoes?
White colored peppers?
Or perhaps potatoes?
So you see the foods they eat are not unlike those in our own country.
But now we've left the city for a trip into the highlands.
There in the distance is one of the many volcanoes to
be found in this part of the world.
In the highlands we find mostly all the people are Indians.
Their transportation is primitive, old-fashioned.
They believe in doing things as their fathers did them.
And their fathers were here long before the Spaniards came 400 years ago.
Some of the Indians cannot even speak the language of a neighboring tribe.
But when they get to market, they will have no trouble selling their wares.
Just as soon as this old man hurries by, we'll take you into the next town.
Water is not as plentiful as it is in most North American cities.
A pool and a public square serves as a community laundry.
Children here do a lot more of the family work than most of
our parents ask us to do.
It is a part of their education.
Have you ever heard of the ancient Maya?
It is spelled M-A-Y-A.
These people are descendants of the Maya Indians and are said to be the oldest
civilized people in the Western Hemisphere.
When the Spaniards came and conquered the Maya, they found brilliant costumes,
art, and a culture unknown even in Europe at that time.
So now it is believed that the civilization of the ancient Maya may be
among the oldest in the world.
These then are among the very first Americans.
Today Indians grow maize or corn just as we have learned to do.
That is their principal food crop.
Only a few have their own cattle, and the farmer who
owns an ox is a rich man.
As you can see, their way of farming is very simple compared to ours.
On higher ground, we find the cocoa tree.
In Spanish it is called cacao.
Here is a cacao pod.
The bean grows in this pod.
It is from this bean that we get our cocoa and chocolate.
The sharp knife he uses to open the pod is called a machete.
Now you have learned another Spanish word.
After the cocoa beans are spread out in the sun to dry, they are packed in bags
and shipped to countries all over the world.
People drink a great deal of cocoa, but Americans drink more coffee.
Here are coffee beans being stripped from a bush.
Did you know that they look like little red berries?
Well, that is the way coffee grows.
You might almost think they were cherries or cranberries.
Although we call them coffee beans, they really are seeds that
grow inside their red fruit.
Coffee is one of the biggest exports of middle America.
Large plantations may have a million trees and employ thousands of workers.
Coffee grows best on high ground with good drainage and is
found only in the tropics.
Carts first bring the ripe berries or seeds to drying pits where
they are unloaded to dry in the sun.
Here is a typical drying plant
where coffee beans are spread out in the sun.
The outer hulls are removed by washing.
Here you see men pushing the beans through a watering trough.
This washes away the hulls or outer parchment.
When they are thoroughly washed, they are spread out in the sun to dry.
After they turn green in the sun, the beans are split, packed into bags, and
shipped to coffee roasters all over the world.
We all know what happens to coffee after that.
Now huge streams of water being sprayed over a banana plantation is our first
introduction to why this rich area is called banana land.
Banana plants need a great deal of water.
In the dry season, they have to be watered in this overhead way.
Another method of bringing water to the plants is by surface canals.
This is called irrigation.
Here is a large banana plantation.
Now before we go any further, let's take a look and see where
bananas first came from.
Bananas originally came from the moist tropical region of southern Asia.
Alexander the Great found them here.
In time, banana roots were taken from their original
home to the east coast of Africa.
From here, the banana was carried westward across Africa by the Arabs.
Portuguese explorers, before the time of Columbus, found them growing here and
took them to the Canary Islands off the North African coast.
Around the year 1516, Father Tomas de Bellanga brought them to the islands of the
West Indies and later to the mainland of what we call Middle America.
Now after clearing the jungle, here's how the banana is planted.
Holes are dug a foot deep and 15 to 18 feet apart.
A banana root, a bit looking very much like a tree stump and weighing 3 to 5
pounds, is planted in each hole.
Each root has two or more eyes like the eyes of a potato.
Here's how the root would look if you could see it in the ground.
Each bud or eye on these underground stems can develop into a
plant or shoot with leaves.
From these sprout many cord-like roots which grow in all directions.
They absorb water and minerals from the soil.
The first leaf appears above the ground three or four weeks after planting.
Only the stronger shoots are allowed to grow. The others are cut away.
In about six months the plants are more than 10 feet high.
And at nine months they are ready to blossom.
About 10 months after planting, the flower has appeared at the top of the tall
stalk, and as it grows it turns downward.
Small bananas soon appear.
As the bananas grow, they turn upwards toward the light.
At the end of about 14 months the bunch is fully developed and ready to harvest.
The stem which bears the bunch of fruit grows up through the center of the stalk
and comes out on top.
So you see the young banana plant looks like a tree, but it is not a
tree because there is no wood.
The trunk of stalk consists only of overlapping leaf sheaths.
And as you saw on the chart, each plant bears only a single bunch of bananas.
Bananas are harvested the year round. The men usually work in teams of three.
One is called a cutter. Here is a team starting out to work.
The cutter uses a sharp-edged tool on the end of a pole to nick the
plant a few feet below the bunch.
See how he does it?
As the plant bends, the bunch comes down on the shoulder of
another man who is called a backer.
Each bunch weighs from 50 to 75 pounds.
When a man has to carry this load on his back, it is easy to
understand why he is called a backer.
The fruit must be cut at just the right stage of growth.
When the bananas are not too fat and not too thin, each plant is cut down
when its bunch has been harvested.
The bunch is made up of clusters called hands.
Each hand has from 12 to 20 bananas, and each bunch has from 6 to 14 hands.
Now, how many bananas are in the bunch?
The bunches are laid carefully on padding to keep them from being bruised.
Rough handling at this point leaves bruised marks on the tender fruit.
The whole operation right from the first cutting is planned and timed.
Far from the moment the truck arrives to start the bananas on their way to you,
everything runs on schedule.
Even as the bananas are loaded for the first stage of their journey, a ship of
the Great White Fleet is on its way, scheduled to make port at the same time the
bananas arrive from the plantation.
Notice how padding is placed over the bunches at all times to protect them from
the sun, to keep them from being scarred by rough handling.
Here is a tractor trailer on its way to a place on the plantation where each
bunch of bananas will be washed and inspected before being loaded into freight
cars for the trip down to the coast on the waiting steamship.
See how each bunch is dipped several times.
Great care is taken to see that the bunches are cleaned
before they leave the plantation.
Now as the bananas are loaded aboard the freight cars for the trip to the coast
and with banana leaves carefully protecting them from the sun, you might like to
know the banana is one of the few fruits that loses its flavor
if allowed to ripen on the plant.
The banana must be cut green and ripened artificially.
While we think of it as a hardy everyday food, this is only because so much care
is taken to see that it arrives at our tables in good condition.
Even building a railroad to haul bananas through this tropical
country is a story in itself.
One of the first banana railways took 25 years to build only
a hundred miles of track.
The ship, one of the great white fleet, meets the train, then begins the race
against time to get the bananas into the air conditioned hull of the ship.
It is interesting to know that if it were not for fast transportation, bananas in
North America and the rest of the world would be a rare delicacy, a fruit no one
could afford to have or to buy.
As workers carry the bunches to the conveyor belt, a man hacks off the end of
each bunch with the same kind of knife we saw used on the plantation.
Remember, it's called a machete.
The conveyor belt, which carries the bananas from the dock to the ship, even has
canvas pockets to protect the fruit.
An inspector watches each bunch as it comes aboard. If he thinks a bunch will
ripen too soon, it is taken off and used like...
Now the ship is about ready to leave.
Within 12 hours, 10 million bananas have been taken
aboard and the ship is on its way to the United States.
From New York, New Orleans, San Francisco and other ports in the United States,
bananas are shipped by rail across country in special cars that are kept cool
in summer, warm in winter.
Arriving at their destination, the green bananas are bought by the wholesaler who
hangs them on racks in a warm ripening room.
The bunches are kept hanging anywhere from three or four days to a week.
Now a bright golden yellow, the bananas are ready for market. The even
temperature of the ripening room, between 60 and 68 degrees, plus proper humidity
and ventilation, has brought out the full natural flavor of the fruit.
He's cutting off what we call hands of bananas from the main stem, the color of
the skin as a guide to ripeness.
Some banana packers sort and grade the fruit for quality and ripeness. In some
places, you can buy bananas all dressed up in special banded packages, like this.
The golden fruit is now ready for its final trip to your neighborhood market.
Carefully boxed to keep them from bruising, bananas are bought by the
pound and sold by the pound.
Does this look familiar? Ah, they've caught her eye.
Bananas are a favorite breakfast fruit in every home. Sliced over hot or cold
cereal, they top off any dish and help start the day right.
School cafeterias that cooperate with state and federal agencies in providing
balanced lunches for children report bananas are among the most popular and best
liked fruits that are served.
Bananas can be served in many different and many attractive ways.
Blended with fruits, nuts and gelatin, they provide
high food value and nourishment.
Many of us enjoy a mid-afternoon snack when it's a helpful banana milkshake. If
you don't have an electric mixer, just mash a fully ripe banana into mother's
mixing glass, pour in cold milk and beat until smooth.
Doesn't that look good? Yes, and it's nourishing too.
And for dinner, see what mother has for dessert, banana gingerbread shortcake.
Just another of the many tempting ways in which this
nutritious fruit can be prepared.
So now that you've seen where bananas come from before they reach your table, our
journey to banana land has ended.
We hope you enjoyed the trip. We know you like bananas.